Bargains and a giveaway
Sky Blue Press is offering their titles, including their Anais Nin publications as well as the poetry of Stephane Mallarme and Daisy Aldan, at incredibly good prices. Worldwide shipping is available, and any buyer gets a priceless but free gift. Details are below (clicking on each icon will take you to the bookstore directly):
The Portable Anais Nin, by popular demand, will be available in print. In fact, we are using this sale to fund its publication. It is a chronological anthology of Nin’s most important writings, beginning at age 12 and continuing to just before her death. It is not only a handy guidebook to her work, it also follows her evolution as a writer and as a woman. Introduced and annotated by Benjamin Franklin V, it is projected to be in print by October 1, 2011. Sky Blue Press is taking advanced orders at a 25% discount for a limited time. (reg. $19.99): $14.99
The Winter of Artifice: a facsimile of the original 1939 Paris edition. This book had been out of print for nearly 70 years because it was banned in English-speaking countries and war had obliterated its distribution in France. This book is made from the original unexpurgated version. (hardcover, reg. $29.50): $5.99
One of 25 limited edition copies of the above title (signed and numbered by Benjamin Franklin V, including a rare glossy photo of Nin in 1939 Paris, and a facsimile of her handwritten diary entry describing how the edition was doomed; hardcover, reg. $100.00): $49.50 (less than 5 left).
A Cafe in Space, Volume 1, the special Nin centennial edition (2003), with unpublished diary excerpts, picture tours of Nin’s France, and articles by top Nin scholars. (reg. $15.00): $4.99
A Cafe in Space, Volume 2, which includes Nin’s “dream of Haiti,” a love affair with a culture and its members, essays on Nin’s writing, Henry Miller, and an excerpt from Anton Chekhov’s sister’s memoir. (reg. $15.00): $4.99
A Cafe in Space, Volume 3, which focuses on all three of the “musketeers”: Anais Nin, Henry Miller, and Lawrence Durrell, with studies by some of the world’s top scholars. (reg. $15.00): $4.99
A Cafe in Space, Volume 4 includes correspondence between Anais Nin, her agent Gunther Stuhlmann, and publisher Alan Swallow, which details the frustration, pain, hope, breakthroughs, betrayals, and heartbreak on the way to Nin’s ultimate fame; revealing letters between editor John Ferrone and Rupert Pole, who were at odds about how to present Nin’s first unexpurgated diary, Henry and June. (reg. $15.00): $4.99
A Cafe in Space, Volume 5 is a special issue with Nin’s unpublished critical writing, treatments of her fiction, and an extensive interview conducted at the height of her fame in 1969. (reg. $15.00): $4.99
A Cafe in Space, Volume 6 contains “Prelude to a Symphony,” recently discovered letters from Joaquin Nin to his daughter in 1933 around the time of the beginning of their incestuous affair. These letters make clear who the aggressor in this relationship was, and to what lengths Nin’s father went to entice his grown daughter to his lair in the south of France. Also included are several articles regarding Nin’s writing, Henry Miller, and poetry. (reg. $15.00): $4.99
The complete set of A Cafe in Space, Vols. 1 through 8 (reg. $99.50): $54.99 (only 3 complete sets left)
To Purify the Words of the Tribe: The Verse Poems of Stephane Mallarme, including his masterpiece “Un Coup De Des,” translated by Daisy Aldan, recoginized worldwide as Mallarme’s premier translator. This bilingual volume contains the French symbolist’s poems in both French and English, in the same visual format used by Mallarme himself, with expositions by Aldan. By far the best Mallarme translation on the market today. (reg. $19.95): $3.99
The Collected Poems of Daisy Aldan: 1933-2000. Daisy Aldan, who was Anais Nin’s close friends, was more than just a maverick Beat publisher and translator; she was also a very accomplished poet whose style was always evolving and always deeply spiritual. From her lush early poems to her minimalist later ones, this book chronicles the birth and evolution of one of the twentieth century’s best kept secrets. (reg. $29.95): $5.95 (there are less than 20 left)
Check out these and Sky Blue Press’s other titles at their new bookstore: http://www.skybluepress.org
To see all available digital titles by Anaïs Nin, visit our Nin e-bookstore.
To order books from the Nin house in Silver Lake (Los Angeles), visit the Anaïs Nin Trust bookstore.
Daisy Aldan’s poem for Anaïs Nin
Daisy Aldan, longtime friend and collaborator with Anaïs Nin, wrote this moving poem in Anaïs’s memory after she’d succumbed to a long battle with cancer in 1977. This poem is taken from Aldan’s volume Collected Poems of Daisy Aldan. The poem, read by Aldan at a memorial for Nin in 1977, was also included in ANAIS: An International Journal, Vol. 10, edited by Gunther Stuhlmann, and in Anaïs Nin: A Book of Mirrors, edited by Paul Herron. Aldan remarked, “I was with her a few days before she died, and for this I am grateful. Although in great pain, although she knew she was dying, she was noble, with thoughts of others—of helping particular young writer friends. The dignity and beauty emanating from her startled me, and I experienced a kind of illumination around her as she lay in bed. Among her last words to me were that she was trying to establish a ‘a circle of good’ in the midst of much ugliness in the life of our time. She was a remarkable human being” ANAIS: An International Journal, Vol. 10, 77.
For Anaïs
d. January 14, 1977 at
midnight
1.
in the obscurity of the room
illumination: you and phosphorescent death
fusing
your voice
usurped by the wizard
our hands meeting
eloquent final
your embrace took me with you
a moment into the source of dream
where you were returning
phosphor / ash to gold
raying upward
from the Sea
2.
wound-up bone
prepares to explode
a coiled-in moment
prepares for sunburst
a fluttering
you awake into radiance
3.
You die
but you advance
as wings of light
move in the expanse
of sky
Unique as compassion.
in the air we breathe
we meet the light
you begin to shed
toward us
We had not dreamed that gone
you would be accessible
in the place
of intangible light
as new dimension
For crossing
you had to become bone/
cross: And that flame bore you beyond
the gravity of ground: joined
you to the light.
Daisy Aldan, all rights reserved
Anaïs Nin’s Artistic Associations: Daisy Aldan (a poem)
Here is an excerpt from Collected Poems of Daisy Aldan. The following 1964 poem marked the beginning of Aldan’s dramatic ascent into 20th century avant-garde poetry and the beginning of a spiritual voyage that would continue for the rest of her life.
The Destruction of Cathedrals
I’m weary of visiting Cathedrals.
Let me make a pilgrimage to the trembling cathedral
of my own spirit
For there like France at war, I find myself,
“Not standing forth in pride and glory, but on my
knees in mourning, amid ruins,”
Amid the noise of falling glass and plaster.
Statues, pinnacles, bell turrets, counterforts; crockets,
birds, pillars and arches
All all in ruins — incalcinated.
Cross, candlesticks, reliquaries, masonry, swept away
like wisps of straw.
The smiling angel has only half a face,
The chimera which climbs to meet her has been struck
by a bullet in her back,
The hands of the caryatid, amputated,
Solomon’s cloak is cracked; the Queen of Sheba has
lost her robe and crown.
The flames have scaled the steeples —
spread over the roofs —
O vos omnes qui transites per viam, attendete et videte
Everywhere they are licking the lead plates
Disclosing the bare frame “forest” across interlacing
balconies
Like a prodigious skeleton of fire
Leaving an immense void — twisted iron, indented
clock wheels, broken muted bells.
Foolish imposter doors which did not open
Hang in high galleries. Perforated the great
roses — intense blues, purples,
Reds so warm and vigorous which burnished
The rays of the midday sun. The gargoyles drip
heavy tears. I hear the bells falling.
Wind is raging among the naves and corpses.
–Daisy Aldan, all rights reserved
Anaïs Nin’s Artistic Associations: Daisy Aldan
During the 1950s, New Yorker Daisy Aldan (1918-2001), poet and renegade publisher, gained notice for her revolutionary translation of enigmatic French Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé’s masterpiece, “Un Coup De Des” (“A Toss of the Dice”), and was the first to open the door to serious study of Mallarmé in the English-speaking world (the translation can be found in To Purify the Words of the Tribe). She founded Tiber Press in 1953, publishing her own work and that of Village poets such as John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, James Schuyler, Storm De Hirch, Charles Olson, and Harriet Zinnes, as well as the artwork of Jackson Pollack, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Joan Mitchel, Larry Rivers, Robert Motherwell, and Grace Hartigan. Her Folder Magazine was for years a home to the work of then-unknown artists whose careers in many cases became stellar.
Although a recipient of many awards and Pulitzer Prize nominations, Aldan’s own career never achieved the heights of some who filled Folder Magazine’s pages. To support herself, she worked as a teacher at New York’s prestigious High School of Art and Design, where her presence became an institution; she retired in 1973 to devote herself to her writing. To this day, her former students’ blogs remember her glowingly.
In 1959, Aldan befriended Anaïs Nin, who at that time was a struggling novelist with a small but dedicated following. Aldan and Nin shared bold points of view, and both suffered the trials of self-publishing. Both women had to wage fierce battles to be heard and put into print. Nin noted in her diary, “Daisy is a magnificent poet, of the highest quality, yet she has to publish her poetry herself. Her teacher’s salary goes into that.”
Daisy Aldan and Anaïs Nin collaborated on many projects, including a 1960 reading of “Un Coup De Dés” at the Maison Française in New York, where Nin read the original French, and Aldan read her English translation. The reading was recorded and broadcast on radio. Aldan was also one of Nin’s New York friends who helped her keep her “trapeze life” (her bicoastal relationships with Rupert Pole and Hugh Guiler) from imploding. She often took calls from Rupert Pole (whom Nin told she was staying with Aldan) and explained that Anaïs “had just stepped out” and would have her return the call. She then referred to a card index upon which Nin’s schedule was written, call her with Rupert’s message, and she would then call him back, never missing a beat. According to Aldan, she was but one of many who partook in this very complicated process.
Daisy Aldan, 1970s
During the early 1960s, Aldan took over the editorship of poetry for the French/English literary magazine Two Cities which Anaïs Nin had co-edited. Contributors included Nin, Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, and Richard Wright. In the meantime, Aldan’s poetry was gaining recognition, and it was during this time (1963) she, through Two Cities Press in Paris, published her first acclaimed volume, The Destruction of Cathedrals and Other Poems (all of which is now included in her Collected Poems of Daisy Aldan), with several more to come. There was never an end to her experimentation in style, whether it was poetic or visual. She worked until her health began to decline in the mid-1990s, still managing to publish the translations Mallarme’s major verse poems in 1998, and her Collected Poems was published less than a year after her death in 2001.
The late Stanley Kunitz, when he was Poet Laureate of the United States, said of Aldan: “The world that engages her imagination lies beyond the ‘merely temporal and physical.’ Like Mallarmé, to whom she has devoted much of her primary and influential work as a translator, her poems evoke an interior landscape of dream and reverie, from which she ‘wakes to the miraculous.’”